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....................................... Unusual Suspects, end of day, Monday, October 6
.......... I've put up a tiny photo album from our recent trip to the Lake District. .......... Phil Greenspun answers the question: What is the point of blogging? I've noticed that many of the books I read (especially the "how-to" ones) are about 175 pages too long. So many times I've said to myself "without the padding and fluff and repetition, this 200-page book would make a good 20-page read." .......... Perseus did a survey of blogs and found that "of 4.12 Million Hosted Weblogs, Most Little Seen, Quickly Abandoned." My half dozen faithful readers should know that I will never abandon this site! .......... Matt Haughey has come to the conclusion that micropayments indeed suck and that Google's AdSense is the cat's meow.
"In order to have any remote chance of success gaining an interested audience and getting good on-topic ads showing up, pick a narrow topic
you are passionate about and run with it ... Focused blogging isn't that popular but I'm convinced it's the only way to have a chance to
carve out a niche on the web."
.......... Bloomberg reports that China opens the door to lucrative auto loans.
"Foreign and domestic automakers with more than 4 billion yuan, or $483 million, in assets the year before application and
annual revenue of more than 2 billion yuan can apply to set up financing companies.... These companies must also have been profitable for three consecutive years."
I guess that means that the practice of showing up with a paper bag stuffed with 300,000 renminbi is going to end. When I was in China I attended more than one transaction where an electric bill counter came in handy.
.......... Paul Kasriel explains why industrial commodity prices will continue to trend higher, and what it means for stock and bond prices. .......... Bill Fleckenstein makes the case to own gold... probably just in time to catch the top. I think there are a lot of insurance policies against "the Fed, inflation, tough economic times and a currency debacle," and owning precious metals is just one (very archaic) form of protection. There are a lot of commodities out there you can hoard... I've filled our bathtub with soybean oil if you must know. ;-) .......... Last Friday while we were enjoying the views from Helm Crag the jobs report was released and the markets moved pretty sharply: stocks up, bonds down, dollar up, gold down. 92.50 is the line in the sand as far as the Dollar Index is concerned and so far it's holding. The Bonds got hammered, and the Gold futures just collapsed in the afternoon, falling about $15 in only a couple of hours, yow. It's not every day you see a $20 daily range in the Gold futures.
Previous Entry >>> Random Thoughts -- October 2 |
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Chairman MaoXian |
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